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Friday, January 19, 2007

My mate Wend.

Had an email from my mate Wend this morning. She's an awesome chick! Sometimes she masquarades as a mild mannered librarian, but the rest of the time she spends droving cattle through the high country. Yup. One day shelving books, the next organising hundreds of cows, a dozen dogs and several horses, oh and her husband.

Here's a bit of what she wrote.

After a dry beginning to the year we left Stuartfield with the cattle on Anzac day 2006 reaching Califat in late May and left again heading west in early June. We stayed on the road until the week of the wedding, weaving our way through the Junee, Temora, Young, Cootamundra and West Wyalong areas.

On the Monday following the wedding we started to slowly work our way towards home finally reaching Califat on 15th November. We carted water for the cattle almost the entire time we were away. Early in October we travelled over a stock route contaminated with dumped car batteries, we lost a few cattle and it was necessary to test all of the adult cattle in the mob for lead residue - we blood tested 734 cattle the day after we reached Califat - there is a cut off period for testing for lead residue - we had a day to spare. The $15,000 cost of testing has cleared all but a handful of the mob for sale, those testing positive will be with us for fourteen months.

A few days after testing the mountain cattle left for the trip through Kosiosko National Park and reached Stuartfield on 23rd December. During the bush trip I had a very pleasant 10 days working at the Tumut Shire Library although it meant a juggling act to move the cattle and feed those left at home.

Just a reminder that Woolworths is donating all its profits to Drought Relief on 23rd January. Yes I know that they are part of the problem (paying the farmers nothing and charging us the earth), and its all a huge publicity stunt. But at least on that day they'll be doing the right thing.